Reader Comment

From Byter Robyn:

Your byte about sunlight soap prompted heaps of memories. My father was a linotype operator so industrial strength soap was an essential in our home. I recall sugar and soap poultices well for anything from splinters to boils. Was the black ointment (liberally applied to or for all manner of injury or illness) Friars Balsam by any chance?

Failing those remedies it was a dose of rum and milk (regardless of age)

The sunlight soap was broken into individual blocks across the side of the washing tub (which was next to the copper).

Like yourself I am drawn to the handmade soaps at local markets. My personal favourite is sandalwood although I will seek out the mandarin in future.

Robyn

Reply:

I don't remember the brand of black ointment, it wasn't Friar's Balsam though.  It came in a jar and was simply labelled Black Ointment, smelt like the dickens and made your skin turn really white when it was left on...

Reader Comment

From Byter Steve:

Diane and I visited Robert Louis Stevenson's grave and home when we went to Samoa last year. It’s a wonderful place, full of presence. I spent ages in his writing room and could feel him – there was an atmosphere which said “Here is a place where a great man lived and worked”. RLS was a great benefactor for the Island, and was loved dearly by the natives at all levels. His was a grand life, but he knew what it was like to be a common man and indeed he had a great respect for working people.

His body of work of course, is his legacy, and he should be remembered for its quality and his wonderfully furtive imagination. He doesn’t receive as much credit in the literary world as some of the great modern writers (Stephen King for instance), but he stands hands and shoulders above them all, and I believe he is there at the front of the line alongside the greatest story teller of them all – Charles Dickens. Apart from Dickens, who else has a legacy that touches so many people at so many levels?  For instance, find me an adult who hasn’t read Treasure Island and then find me a child who hasn’t read it or who doesn’t know the story? You can’t. He has spanned  generations and touched the lives of those millions upon millions of people and there is not a foul word amongst it.

A truly wonderful man.